Matthew 18: 21-35
[Continuing the conversation] Peter posed this question to Jesus: "Lord, how often can a brother do a bad thing to me and I have to forgive him? As many as seven times?" Jesus replied, "Not seven times, but seventy times seven. Following that principle, the domain of heaven should be compared to an earthly ruler who wanted to settle accounts with his slaves. When he began to do the math he saw that one debtor owed him 10 million dollars. That slave could not repay the amount, so the ruler ordered him sold together with his wife and children and all he owned so as to settle the account. The slave collapsed, fell to his knees and begged in front of him, saying, 'Have patience with me and I'll repay the entire amount.' The ruler was so moved to pity by what he saw and heard that he released him and forgave his debt, just like that! No sooner did that happen than the slave put the arm on one of his fellow slaves who owed him 100 dollars, took him by the neck and demanded immediate restitution, saying, 'Pay me back what you owe me right now!' The first slave [exercising his option under the law] had him thrown into [debtor's] prison until he would repay the debt. When the other slaves saw what had happened, they reported it to the ruler. That prompted the ruler to summon the first slave, and he said to him, 'You are a horrible person. I released you from your debt to me because you asked me to do so. Would it not have been fair to treat your fellow slave as I had treated you?' And the ruler was so angry that he delivered that slave to the torture squad for punishment until the debt was paid. So understand that such are the ways of God, unless you each forgive your brothers and sisters."
(Translated and paraphrased by Harry T. Cook.)
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Forgiveness is the theme of this passage. The word in the Greek text is άΦεσις meaning dismissal or release. In Homeric Greek it refers to "letting go from." The most noted use of one form of the word is found in what is called "the Lord's prayer" (Matthew 6:9ff: "forgive us our debts . . ."). Matthew depicts Peter as asking how many times he must forgive. The Jesus Seminar people do not credit the response Matthew gives Jesus to say as an authentic Jesus saying. They say Matthew picked up the Q communities' rule of order in this text. The Babylonian Talmud includes a discussion of how many times one must forgive the same person the same kind of offense. The number is generally three. The fact that both Matthew and Luke use the seventy-times-seven formula is significant in that it may have been an "improvement" on the Talmud's entry on the subject. What seventy times seven must mean is "as often as necessary" so as to create a culture of forgiveness which any community that aspires to peace, justice and longevity must maintain.
The parable of the unforgiving servant is nowhere else found in the gospels and is almost certainly an invention of or an appropriation by the Matthean author or editors from an earlier and independent text. Rabbinical parables often used a king or ruler as a central figure, generally representing Yahweh. In this case, it is a ruler who is depicted as desiring to settle his accounts with his slaves. Given, though, the size of the transaction with the first - 10,000 talents or roughly $10 million U.S. at 1950 levels -- that slave in the author's imagination must have been pretty well off and far from the norm of first century CE peasantry. But the contrast between that vast debt and the piddling one of the second slave is the crux of the story.
An astronomical debt was wiped out in a minute by a superior who had "pity." The Greek here is much more colorful than "pity." It is σπλαγχνιοθείς from σπλάγχνον meaning "innards" or "viscera." The ruler's decision to forgive was based not on arithmetic, rather on gut emotion.
That's what renders the subsequent action of the forgiven slave so out of joint. The natural human assumption in virtually any culture is that he would have been so caught up in the euphoria of having this enormous stone removed from his back that he would be moved to pass forgiveness along to his own debtor who owed him far less than he had owed the ruler. For that, the text says, he was abandoned literally to "the torturers or tormenters." The verb form is "to test by abrading," as in rubbing metal with a touchstone to test its worth. It was one thing to be imprisoned for debt. It is quite another to be condemned to torture.
The question is whether the parable adequately or even accurately portrays the deity whom the Jesus of Matthew's imagination evidently envisioned as the arbiter of his ethic. The parable is long on judgment and short on grace.
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The consequence of not forgiving may be compared to the refusal to seek surgical treatment for a malignant tumor that, if removed, would leave the patient cancer-free. An unforgiven offense is like a cancer that only worsens with time until it is killed or kills.
The standard Christian idea is that, since God forgave human sin by allowing his son to die on the cross to pay its penalty, it is the least we can do to forgive one another. But can that be the point?
No sane 21st-century person can possibly believe in what is known as "the blood atonement" as the means of effecting forgiveness. Since increasingly we are coming to understand that it is relationships among human beings, rather than any relationship with an unseen deity, that matter, maybe we should leave "god" out of the conversation about forgiveness.
Does forgiveness consist in a formal act for the benefit of those in whose presence it is effected? Is forgiveness the kind of quid pro quo requirement as depicted in the parable of the unforgiving slave? Or can it better be likened to a flow of current that powers the lives of communities and without which they and their inhabitants must live in darkness?
Imagine a modern city at night with its streets and avenues illuminated by lamps, its buildings and homes lighted from within. It can be a very beguiling scene. Imagine that same city plunged into darkness by a massive power failure. Not only are the aforementioned lamps and lights extinguished, but the traffic signals go dark as well. The city is paralyzed and in peril because some of its residents have lost their way; others cannot see what they are doing or need to do. They are cut off from a very important power source.
Forgiveness may be akin to that power, i.e. the willingness and intention to forgive offenses rather than to savor them as food for revenge, the inclination to refuse to have one's behavior dictated by another. That is the concept that underlies the passive resistance of turning the other cheek. It is a strategy for making and keeping peace.
For humanity, forgiveness is not so much a virtue as it is a necessity, just as electricity is to a city. Humanity loses its way apart from a dynamic culture of forgiveness just a post-Edison city cannot be negotiated safely in darkness. Just as there is no community apart from forgiveness, so a city unlit is a chaos of people groping in the dark, afraid and untrusting.
